Wednesday, March 14, 2012

2 day loss = 2 week gain

Even with 1 hour less sleep than usual, extra family duty this
morning, I was still feeling confident, even with the yesterday's performance hanging over me. I was ready.

The first trade looked like a
decent setup, and something I would take again and again. But it went
+1.25, just one tick shy of being able to bring my stop up to breakeven,
and got a full stop out.

The yellow flag comes out
Uh oh, first trade that's a full
loss -- that's when I should pull out a yellow flag and put it on my
monitor.

Then the dreaded double clicking of the DOM took place, which
entered me into a extra position. At least this time, I was able to
gracefully exit. But still, another stop loss.

This was followed by more sloppy and rogue trading, more
losses. Downward spiral. Discipline was thrown out of the window, I
was totally out of sync. I was in a different world, in a not so good way.

This chart, from VanKar's Trade Analyzer, also shows that my entries were
terrible, and rarely went much in the money before getting stopped out. And you can see how I even let trade #5 get to +2.00 profitable, and yet I still booked a loss. Shame.

Rogue Grove comes off the bench after lunch
During lunch, I tried to
take a nap, but as exhausted as I was, I couldn't sleep. So I made a
decision to let Rogue Grove out to play. The day was shot, the
execution score was not even worth it tracking.

I fully realized, this decision was dangerous. Whether it was my
fatigue that allowed it, or some part of my subconscious, I don't know.
It's almost a lose/lose situation -- if I made a good P&L comeback,
then it reinforced potentially bad behavior. If I really let things go,
then the protection of my capital, my priority #1, was unnecessarily
risk.

"That Voice"
But on the flip side, there's a certain point
where you need to start listening that "that voice" in your head, you
know, the solid and reliable one that starts whispering to you what's about to happen, and
is usually right. Probably based on the culmination of hours/years of screen time experience, it's a voice easily confused with "Gambler Grove's" voice. But I
really believe that over time, it's becoming a little easier to tell them
apart.

So I wanted to test it out. To see if I'm getting to the point
where I'm able to start operating at the level of an "unconscious trader." You can absolutely argue the point that I wasn't of sound mind to make that
decision at that moment in time, but it you know what, it still seems justified after the dust settled. Chalk it up to a self discovery experiment.

The "almost" comeback
I was down about
-10.00 ES points and got the P&L back to less than -1.00. Not bad, a "typical" 9 point comeback.

But
overconfidence took over, and I didn't want another one of those "almost
got back to breakeven" days. I wanted to close solidly green. So "Gambler Grove" took the wheel from "Rogue Grove", and went for
the gusto to CRUSH IT -- anticipating a big selloff into the close.

Didn't happen. Strike out.
Ended
up going from -1.00, to -6.50 points, working 2 contracts around a
short position. But at least I didn't end up trading like I traded $TNA on this day.

Back to where I started
The losses from the past 2 days
have just about offset the gains from the past 2 weeks. So essentially,
I'm back where I started on March 1st.

Gluttony took over
today, and now I feel the effects. Luckily,
the damage was minimal. Now it's time to regroup, refocus on the
fundamentals, and get back on track.